CONEJO CLINIC: The first public health clinic...

CONEJO CLINIC: The first public health clinic in the Conejo Valley has opened (B4). . . . Until recently, much of Ventura County’s effort to provide public health care was focused in the west county. But the Thousand Oaks clinic has brought low-cost care closer to home for some. “This is much more handy,” resident Patti Hanson said.

BOTTOMS UP: Michael Fay, what hath thou wrought? . . . Spurred by the harsh punishment meted out to the Ohio teen-ager, who was caned four times for graffiti crimes in Singapore, a California Assembly committee has approved a bill that would allow authorities to smack taggers up to 10 times with a wooden paddle (A3). . . . The measure still faces major legislative hurdles. And it hasn’t won much local support. “I cringe personally when I think about it,” said Frank Woodson, Ventura County’s corrections chief. “Crime is a serious problem, but is that what we want as a society?”

IT’S A MYSTERY: Salinas has Steinbeck. Hannibal, Mo., has Mark Twain. Even Tarzana has Edgar Rice Burroughs. . . . In Ventura, the scribe of renown is mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, who brought fictional lawyer Perry Mason to life. . . . Local author Richard Senate is planning a Masonesque murder-mystery tour downtown. And fans have set up a temporary shrine honoring Gardner at Ventura’s Phantom Bookstore, near the office where he once toiled. But they’re baffled by the lackluster response. “That’s the big mystery to me,” one lamented.

LAWYER POOL: Gasp! Just in time to beat the heat, a group of Oxnard attorneys has for the second year in a row come to the rescue of La Colonia’s public swimming pool (B1). . . . Closed in 1991 because of budget cuts, the pool reopened last summer after a bailout by Oxnard City Atty. Gary Gillig and a few of his lawyer friends. . . . This year, they’d hoped for financial help from the city. But Oxnard officials said their coffers are still dry.